One of the few people that really need no introduction.
As one of Atari's original "Imagineers", he helped design the Atari VCS/2600, as
well as the 400/800 SIO interface. He went on to help develop the Amiga
computer and later worked on the USB architecture that we all commonly use
today. The adjective "brilliant" comes to mind. Plus he's a helluva
nice guy.

DP: You graduated from
UC Berkeley with a BS and MS in EECS, correct?

Joe Decuir:Yes. The BS was a
pre-med minor; the MS was in biomedical engineering.

DP: What inspired you
to pursue a career in hardware design?

Joe Decuir:I was fascinated
with computers late in high school, after I lost interest in designing cars. (I
was a kid from LA.) I was good at electronics hardware design in school. I
learned some from my father, who was a Berkeley EE grad from 1948.

DP: Did you work for
anyone prior to Atari (after school)?

Joe Decuir:My first two jobs
were on medical instrumentation and in medical research in a hospital.

DP:
How did you hear about the position at Atari? When did you start working there?

Joe Decuir:I heard of the
position at Atari through a colleague Ed DeWath, who was a pal of Ron Milner
at Atari's think tank in Grass Valley CA.

The original
incarnation of the VCS, complete with joysticks from a Tank coin-op.

DP: What was the
development process of the VCS like?

Joe Decuir:Fun, really
stimulating, a bit intense. We had to be resourceful. I would bicycle to work
and back marveling that I was getting paid to do this. It was so much fun I
could imagine paying to do it.

Steve Mayer and
Ron Milner conceived of the VCS, and designed the first prototype of its
ancestor. I was hired in December 1975 to move to Grass Valley CA and make it
all work. That included the display engine for what eventually became Combat
(we called it Tank at the time. Later we added little jets and little
biplanes).

DP: It must have been
exciting (and a proud moment) to not only help design the chipset for the VCS,
but also write some of the first software (such as Combat and Video Olympics)
for what ultimately became one of the most popular and successful video game
systems to date!

Joe Decuir:It was great, but
I have to tell you, it didn't feel special, and I don't deserve too much
credit. First of all, Ron Milner and Steve Mayer conceived of what became
Combat; I was an implementer. Second, I worked on it mostly as a test case for
the hardware; the biggest contributions I made were figuring out how to add
gates to make software work better, or to add code to allow hardware to be
easier. Larry Wagner, who hired most of the early VCS programmers (including
the founders of Activision and Imagic), made the Combat display engine into a
lot more fun.

I took Pong
as someone else's game, implemented it on Stella as a test case, and then went
off and invented a lot of variations to complete the cartridge. Bob Brown
allowed me to stop at 50 variations.

DP: You once mentioned
that you had programmed a version of Atari's Super Bug coin-op for the
800, purely as a test concept. Do you recall why it was never released?

Joe Decuir:I didn't stick
around to finish it. I started another company with two pals to work on modems
and other communications products.

DP: Were there any
other games or projects that you worked on that ultimately never got released or
even finished?

Joe Decuir:We designed a 6502
derivative with 16 bit extensions. We called it the '6509'. It was never
built, but several design elements ended up in the 65816, which was used in the
Apple IIc (or IIe).

DP:
What were some of your experiences working for Atari? Any stories or anecdotes
from those days that you recall?

Joe Decuir:Way more than can
fit in this space now. Let me defer this one.

DP: After leaving
Atari, you went to work with Jay Miner at Amiga, designing the chipset for the Amiga computer. What were some of the differences between the
two companies, as
far as the development process in regards to the various systems?

Joe Decuir:Big question.
Amiga was smaller and not as well-funded. We tried to self-fund with Atari 2600
market products. When that collapsed, so did Amiga's revenue. That is why we
had to sell chipset rights for coin-op use to Atari, and eventually sell out to
Commodore. OTOH, we were on our third system, and we were a seasoned team with
better process (and, we still had Mitchie the dog for company).

DP: From what I've
heard over the years, the Amiga nearly became the next Atari computer (instead
of the ST). How did that whole situation evolve?

Joe Decuir:
That is an entertaining rumor, but not correct. It is precisely true that Amiga
was starving for money, and Atari was falling apart, so Amiga licensed their
chipset for use in coin-op games. That agreement is public on the web.
Meantime, in 1984, several things happened:

• In early 1984, Tramiel and sons left Commodore.

• In spring 1984, Amiga was shopping itself to Commodore.

• The Apple Mac made its debut in winter 1984.

Then, many things happened at once:

• Warner broke Atari into two pieces. They sold the
coin-op side to Namco, and the consumer side to the Tramiel family for a $250M
loan. Jack evidently knew of the Amiga-Atari deal, and wanted to grab Amiga.

• Amiga sold to Commodore, and the chip license deal was
cancelled.

• Tramiel turned around and sued Jay Miner personally for
patent infringement and theft of trade secrets. Since I had left Amiga, Jack
didn't know I existed. I kept it that way, since Commodore refused to indemnify
me; I could have lost everything I had to pay lawyers.

DP: Can you describe
your career since working at Amiga? You went to Everex, Teledesign, and then
MicroSoft?

DP: With any of the
projects you were involved with (both hardware and software), were there any
features you would like to have added, or any known bugs or glitches that gave
you trouble (or never got resolved)?

Joe Decuir:This is a huge
question. There are things we wish we had put into the Stella (2600) system,
particularly binary horizontal position comparators, more address pins on the
processor and more pins on the cartridge slot (especially R/W, so we could put
RAM there). We wish we could have put Apple II-style hardware slots in the
Atari 800, but FCC rules of that time prevented that. I wish the Amiga had been
made into a game console in 1984-1985 instead of a color MAC like machine in
1986, etc.

DP: Occasionally,
programmers put little Easter eggs in some of their games that would reveal
their name, or a message. What was your opinion of these? Have you ever left any
in your code, or know of others who did?

Joe Decuir:I didn't leave any
in myself. I heard of some in some games. There are Easter eggs in some
versions of Windows that read out all the names of the contributors, and my name
is in several of those.

DP: You mentioned you
still own several VCS games - have you kept a copy of everything that you've
worked on, either as a keepsake, or to show friends or family?

Joe Decuir:Yes, this is my
portfolio. I hope that if I have time and brains as an old retired guy, that I
can try an write some of the games on the hardware that I designed, and use
features, like scrolling in the Atari 800, or bit-blitting in the Amiga.

DP: What are your
thoughts on how the video game industry has evolved? Did you ever consider going
back into that area of work (designing video game hardware)?

Joe Decuir:It might have been
fun, but the industry collapsed in America in 1984, leaving the field to
Nintendo in 1985. Meantime, I had become very excited about computers as
communications tools in 1979, and I told Kassar that in my Atari exit
interview. I was telling him about the French Minitel system, and about what
could happen if that migrated onto what was then called the Arpanet (which
became the internet). I wanted the Amiga to succeed in that space, but
Commodore did not see that.

DP: What might most
people not know about you? (such as being a softball coach, playing in a band,
etc.)

Joe Decuir:I was a scout
leader for 12 years. I am no longer a softball coach; she is in high school.
My band needs a new drummer. I kayak and bicycle a lot, when I am not
traveling. I am the secretary of the IEEE Seattle Section, after chairing the
Communications Society chapter for 9 years. If I could wave a magic wand, I
would have the PhD I started working on after Atari but didn't finish, so I
could be a EECS professor.